“The C.D.C. concedes that cloth masks do not protect against the virus as effectively as other masks.” (NYT, Friday):
When the C.D.C. finally recommended masks for ordinary Americans, it emphasized cloth face coverings. It took months more for the C.D.C. and the W.H.O. to concede that the coronavirus can be carried by tiny droplets called aerosols, which can linger indoors for hours.
After nearly two years we learn that a bandana is not “the best” PPE.
I’m wondering if there would be any way to tease out the effects of federal and state government mask orders and propaganda campaigns on COVID-19 deaths. (Here’s one place in Jupiter, Florida that takes CDC guidance seriously…
)
Theory 1: while cloth masks are garbage compared to a professionally fitted N95 mask used with a full set of Ebola ward precautions, including frequent hand-washing and disposing of the mask after one use, they “did something.” So COVID-19 deaths were perhaps delayed (14 days to flatten the curve) or maybe even prevented (though the mechanism for prevention is unclear).
Theory 2 (core Church of Sweden): cloth masks had almost no effect, just as other Western government efforts were doomed to fail in a “virus in charge” world.
Theory 3: Anders Tegnell, the MD/PhD at the Swedish public health helm in spring 2020, suggested that European Covidcrats consider whether cloth masks and surgical masks could actually intensify a COVID-19 epidemic due to giving people a “false sense of security.” In other words, people who would have stayed home would instead go out with a cloth mask on. People who would have kept a 6′ distance would instead forget.
A friend criticized me for heaping scorn on well-meaning public health officials in the U.S., e.g., calling them Karens and referring to “face rags” rather than “protective cloth masks.” My response:
You’re basically saying “How can you question the $10 trillion two-year anti-COVID war in which the best and brightest U.S. bureaucrats have embroiled American schoolchildren and taxpayers?” Isn’t this the same question that people who supported the Vietnam War (albeit much much cheaper, even adjusted for inflation, and much less disruptive to the average American’s life, and probably far less deadly to Americans (lockdown-induced extra opioid deaths alone will soon exceed American Vietnam War deaths)) asked of the anti-Vietnam War contrarians? For the supporters of the Vietnam War, anyone who said that it was unwinnable and/or actually immoral was unpatriotic as well as crazy/stupid/unscientific. JFK and Lyndon Johnson had assembled the smartest people in the U.S. to hang out at the White House and they’d proven with charts and statistics that the Vietnam War could be won and was being won. Added to this technocratic competence, the pro-Vietnam War folks were motivated by the purest of intentions.
My mocking the cloth masks that the experts told Americans to wear could actually have saved lives, no? By urging people to use common sense and reflect that a wet bandana was not effective PPE, the term “wet face rag” could have resulted in someone either (a) using an N95 mask that would actually provide some protection, or (b) staying home. Why not reserve your criticism for the public health officials who told people that cloth masks were effective? Isn’t it a far greater sin to have told people to nurture a bacteria colony in front of their piehole as a COVID-preventive than anything I did?
… Because of misplaced faith in masks and vaccines, Americans avoided the hard work of restructuring society to thwart respiratory viruses. Los Angeles will soon host a 200,000-person gathering (Super Bowl). Disney and Universal keep thousands of people from all over the country and the world crammed together in indoor lines every day. If not for faith in masks and vaccines, everyone would agree with me that it is crazy to allow these parks to reopen before they restructure their lines to be outdoors-only.
You can infer from the above that I am a Church of Sweden parishioner. However, as is typical for Church of Swedeners, I admit that I can’t be sure that I’m right.
Will #Science ever convincingly settle this debate? The one good study of masks as a public health intervention (as opposed to masks in a lab setting) is the Bangladesh randomized controlled trial (Nature summary). It showed a slight reduction in infections over an 8-week period with surgical masks (no statistically significant effect with cloth masks), but in a society where people have less control over their environment than in the U.S. The typical resident of Bangladesh can’t choose whether to say home and work via Zoom, whether to use a private car instead of public transport, whether to isolate in a corner of the 2,300 square-foot house shared by 3 people, etc.
Maybe Florida versus California is the best that we can do as a natural experiment within the U.S.? Both have climates that enable a lot to be done outdoors. From a Stanford Medical School heretic:
From the above data we could infer that the central Church of Sweden tenet (Theory 2) is the correct answer, i.e., that masks had no effect. But we could also infer that the (cloth) mask orders increased the death rate (Theory 3). By September 2021, when the above chart was published, California had enjoyed nearly 1.5 extra years of protection via lockdown/shutdown compared to Florida, in addition to the masks. So if we believe that the lockdown/shutdown (except for “essential” marijuana stores of course) orders reduced the COVID-19 death rate, we have to suspect that California’s mask orders pushed California COVID-19-tagged deaths up.
Speaking of risk compensation, here’s a message from a physicians’ discussion forum right at the peak of the Omicron surge:
“My twins turned 14 today and had 8 (immunized and also mostly previously infected) kids over for a party. I was told none of them are straight. They played spin the bottle, apparently, and I thought how awesome a game, when everyone feels comfortable kissing everyone! That was NOT my middle school experience. I know there’s a pandemic, but I still thought: cool.”
Maybe a COVID-19-safe version of spin the bottle could be played on Zoom? Each time a person is selected to kiss, he/she/ze/they kisses his/his/zir/their family pet. Mindy the Crippler would be a fan!
And, finally, since this post mentions Sweden:
In response to a comment below, about the CDC recommending cloth masks only as an emergency measure in spring 2020, a current CDC web page, updated August 2021:
Note that the only example are cloth masks.
Related:
- Train Americans to use masks the way that surgeons do or restructure the physical environment? (May 2020)
- Build downdraft paint booths for K-12 schools? (July 2020)
- Karen visits a Florida theme park
- California Karen hosts a 200,000-person mass gathering (Super Bowl in Los Angeles)
- “YouTube suspends Rand Paul for a week over a video disputing the effectiveness of masks.” (NYT, August 11, 2021): In the video, Mr. Paul says: “Most of the masks you get over the counter don’t work. They don’t prevent infection.” Later in the video, he adds, “Trying to shape human behavior isn’t the same as following the actual science, which tells us that cloth masks don’t work.” In fact, masks do work, according to the near-unanimous recommendations of public health experts.
There’s also the question of what, if any, harm has been done by respiratory tract infections caused by the cloth masks. Unfortunately, it’s not a question that anyone who could answer it has shown the slightest interest in.
Ken: That is a great point. What if you’d asked a scientist (a.k.a. pulmonologist) in 2019, “I love Taz and my teeth are kind of yellow and cracked so I’m planning to wear a Taz-printed cloth mask in front of my mouth and nose 8 hours per day, washing it once per week.” (see https://amzn.to/3I7ApyG ) Would the doctor have replied “Great idea and it will keep you safe from influenza, the common cold, and other respiratory viruses”? Or would the doc have cautioned that the moist rag was likely to become a breeding colony for microbes?
This WAS studied a bit after coronapanic began. See https://cbs12.com/news/local/bacteria-is-growing-on-your-mask for example. “Doctor Patrick Grant, a microbiologist working at FAU says you should wear a mask but make sure to wash it often as fungus and bacteria can accumulate quickly. … Grant suggests that families refrain from sharing masks, and suggests everyone wash their hands after touching a uses cloth mask.” In other words, the cloth mask is perfectly safe as long as it isn’t being used by humans (who will not “wash it often” and who will touch it about 50X as often as they wash their hands).
https://www.everydayhealth.com/coronavirus/your-mask-may-be-causing-candida-growth-in-your-mouth/ looks at candida growth, but, again, is not pre-COVID.
> After nearly two years we learn…
The Settled #Science is getting strangely unsettled lately, isn’t it? On vaccines too: EU Drug Regulator Warns Against Overuse of COVID Booster Shots. “The European Union’s drug regulator is warning that too many doses of COVID-19 vaccines could eventually weaken the body’s immune system…” Probably this has already happened, accounting for the higher rates of infection among the vaccinated in most age groups. But as with masks, we’ll probably never know because the medical establishments don’t want to find out.
Pro-maskers are ignorant uneducated* clowns, period. And I mean proponents of all these fancy professionally-fitted N95 masks, too.
The first half of a standard sigmoid curve – when the pathogen infects most people – the one you see in cumulative “cases” graphs, is basically an exponent – reflecting a chain reaction of infection: C = R^t where C is case count, R is reproduction rate, and t is time.
As long as R stays above 1, pretty much everyone susceptible will get infected. All reducing R (by masking, lockdowns, etc) does is delaying the inevitable, prolonging the economic damage, and providing more time for immunity due to previous infection to wane (and providing more time for the virus to evolve to escape immunity by vaccinations). At the later stages of epidemic R is reduced by simply running out of susceptible hosts to infect.
Masks CANNOT POSSIBLY reduce R by more than a factor of 2. Heck, for that you need a BSL-3/4 laboratory environment. Even with that, the virus leaked from the Wuhan lab. It takes a willfully ignorant to think that a mask and staying 6 ft away (no science here… that’s a “rule” originating with medieval avoidance of “evil vapors” or something) would be effective against a virus with R0 of 3 to 7.
* They may be highly credentialed, but they still lack education in basics of math, statistics, biology, and ability to think for themselves.
The New York Times actually ran an article on where the antisocial distancing came from early on, before the Cathedral decided to make it a Democrat vs. Republican thing. The rule originated with a high school science project that some government bureaucrat’s 14 year old daughter did back around 2008 or so (I’ve forgotten the exact year). The article did mention that the government bureaucrat’s new rule was highly controversial when proposed, with a bunch of experts saying that at best it would do nothing, and at worst it would weaken people’s immune systems.
Apparently the dread aerosol floats around for about 20 minutes then loses strength. Science has never been on the side of the fearful ones.
Meanwhile an Israeli heretic:
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Professor Cyrille Cohen is head of Immunology at Bar Ilan University and a member of the advisory committee for vaccines for the Israeli Government. In a wide-ranging and forthright interview, the Professor tells Freddie Sayers:
The Green Pass / vaccine passport concept is no longer relevant in the Omicron era and should be phased out (he expects it to be in short order in Israel)
He and his colleagues were surprised and disappointed that the vaccines did not prevent transmission, as they had originally hoped
The biggest mistake of the pandemic in Israel was closing schools and education – he apologised for that
Widespread infection is now an inevitable part of future immunity — otherwise known as herd immunity
Omicron has accelerated the pandemic into the endemic phase, in which Covid will be “like flu”
======
I am surprised that he is surprised !
The finance minister agrees!
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/finance-minister-calls-for-cancellation-of-covid-vaccine-green-pass/
“There is no medical or epidemiological logic in the Green Pass, many experts agree,” says Liberman. “There is, however, direct harm to the economy, to daily operations and a not insignificant contribution to daily panic among the public.”
I’m happy to see some sort of open discussion in the government. In continental Europe the opposition makes such demands, but the government and mainstream propaganda outlets form a solid block.
Press coverage is also best in Britain and Israel, where one can read different opinions (and actual facts, like in the Daily Mail).
I wouldn’t be so dismissive of masks, Phil’ given Sonia Sotomayor’s science based behavior — courageous in the face of Neil Gorsuch’s unrelenting efforts to do away with the “Wise Latina.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10415739/Sonia-Sotomayor-67-attending-Supreme-Court-remotely-Neil-Gorsuch-refuses-mask.html
Wise Latina who either lies by exaggerating by orders of magnitude or simply innumerate and incapable of comprehending simple stats?
The sooner she dies from her own fear the better. I never agreed to be bossed over by retards.
The story about the CDC changing their advice has been wildly overblown.
When was the first time you heard the term “N95”? It was likely last spring, in the context of finding appropriate masks, because everyone wanted “the good masks”.
Do you remember the run on N95s/KN9s? How did that happen if people didn’t know which masks were better?
Did you ever meet anyone who said “I’m not bothering with a KN95 because the CDC says a simple cotton mask will do”. Does this person even exist?
The early advice to use anything you can find (even cotton) was clearly emergency advice in the context of mask shortages.
If someone went through the collection of Fauci clips, when do you think he first suggested using KN95s or surgical masks instead of handkerchiefs wrapped around your mouth”. Do you think it was closer to 2 weeks ago or 2 years ago? Pretty sure this happened very early in the pandemic.
And yet here we are, with many places including schools requiring cloth masks which are apparently unsupported by science but supported by Science himself (Fauci) and the CDC.
David: Here’s a current CDC page that says it was updated August 12, 2021: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/masks.html
It includes a single photo of masks that people should wear. There are three masks in the photo. None are the surgical masks that can reduce community transmission by 11 percent over an 8-week period. None are N95 masks. All three are cloth masks with different creative designs. I added a screen shot to the original post.
https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2021/01/23/lockdown-is-our-vietnam-war-so-it-will-end-gradually/ (January 2021) quotes a Facebooker:
Of course, we can’t actually do this reassessment because doing so would admit that the last year was madness. The lockdowns are like Vietnam, the political and media establishment have so much invested in them, only a gradual drawdown will be permitted, regardless of the “science.”
——————
Maybe this is true of the cloth masks. The CDC is just now beginning the drawdown from its spring 2020 cloth mask propaganda campaign and it is a gradual drawdown. It could be several years before the CDC says, simply, “cloth masks don’t work”, and it won’t have to acknowledge that earlier advice was incorrect. It will be the virus that has changed via mutation, not Science.
It’s amusing how some people’s memory span is equal to that of the aquarium fish.
Here’s a brief timeline of CDC mask guidelines:
– In early March, CDC director Robert R. Redfield stated that healthy people did not need to wear masks.
– “there’s no reason to be walking around with a mask.” Fauci, March 20, 2020
– “In late March 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published a recommendation that masks be used by those who are sick, or are caring for someone who is sick and not able to wear a mask themselves, and discouraged their use by healthy members of the general public”
– On April 3, 2020, the CDC issued guidance recommending that non-medical face coverings be worn in public
– On May 13, 2021, the CDC announced new guidance, stating that those who are fully vaccinated do not need to wear a mask
– In July, 2021, face masks should be worn within indoor public spaces even if vaccinated
The current mass excitement with [k]N95 masks began at best a couple of weeks ago. Sure, some people did realize early in the game that the cloth mask provides almost no protection and used a N95 instead (but contrary to the Science as embodied by CDC recs), and we are talking here about what CDC the CDC recommended and when, not about what a specific individual chose to do.
Uncle Vinny has the answer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMEiDM_k3ZU
A relative, manager of a retail store, worked a 12-hour long sales shift, due to a promotion.
He did not get covid, but did end up with bacterial pneumonia and a stomach related bug — from wearing a mask the whole time. He was in the hospital for about 10 days as a result.